Seven UTD Faculty Members Win $584,000 In Texas Advanced Research Program Awards

RICHARDSON, Texas (April 26, 2006) — Seven faculty members at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) recently won grants totaling more than $584,000 from the Advanced Research Program (ARP), an annual competition that funds scientific and engineering research projects at Texas public colleges and universities.

The UTD proposals selected for funding were among 88 projects that received a total of $8.3 million in the 2006 competition, which is administered by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.  ARP and an allied initiative, the Advanced Technology Program, were created by the Texas Legislature in 1987 as competitive, peer-reviewed grants programs to fund scientific and engineering research projects of faculty members at Texas higher education institutions.

The names of the UTD 2006 ARP award recipients, the titles of their projects and the amount of their grants follow:

• Dr. Jung-Mo Ahn, assistant professor, Department of Chemistry, Development of Alpha-Helix Mimetics and Their Therapeutic Application for Diabetes, $100,000.
• Dr. Ray Baughman, Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry, Enhancement of Electrical and Thermal Properties of Transparent Carbon Nanotube Sheets, $100,000.
• Dr. Alain Bensoussan, Distinguished Research Professor of Operations Management, School of Management, Statistical Updating Methods in Risk and Decision Analysis: Applications to Supply Chains, $79,000.
• Dr. Walter Hu, assistant professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Controlled Cell Growth on Biomimetic Multi-Level Nanoscale Polymer Scaffolds, $60,000.
• Dr. George McMechan, Ida M. Green Professor of Geosciences, A New Highly Efficient Algorithm for 3-D Velocity Analysis for Imaging of Oil and Gas Reservoirs, $89,993.




• Dr. Robert Stern, professor, Department of Geosciences, North American Earth Structure: the Melding of Petrologic Study of Xenoliths and Geophysical Data, $55,488.
• Dr. Tianbing Xia, assistant professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Mapping Ribozyme Conformational Landscapes with Femtosecond Dynamics, $100,000.

About UTD

The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor, enrolls nearly 14,500 students.  The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores.  The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs.  For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s website at www.utdallas.edu.